34 Comments
The sentwnce is just for language learning. There's a lot of sentemces here that do not make sence. They don't have to. It's to make us talk fluently. We also need to understand when someone says something like " The dog is an actress" or "White wall fell from heaven"
Thanks, KartK3. How true your statement is. We can't have all our sentences suitable for literary awards some are just to get the words and grammar out to the learner. Actually, there are whole sites on Youtube, twitter etc with funny sayings from Duo.
I've eaten horse... can't believe I'm not human. What a way to find out!!!
Jaye, Dimitra and other developers, all my compliments for creating this fantastic tree and helping to develop this great Greek language community When I read all those remarks and comments about the new tree developments I humbly take my hat off. Keep up the good works.
Αυτός είναι ένας συλλογισμός. A great many years ago our Classics teacher told us one which concluded: therefore Socrates is an egg.
Is the one you mean, for the new tree? https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/21439026 Hope that helps.
Horsemeat is not uncommon in some countries I've had it and it was fine. So, joking aside the sentence here might not be factually correct it does present certain vocabulary and grammar.
716
Ive eaten horse and its delicuous. But more importantly, there seems to be a mistake here. It says "ο άνθρωπος" but accepts "a human" as an answer. Im on mobile and i had the pick words excersize, and 'the' wasnt an option
Aside from the fact that the statement is incorrect because as is evident in your post and others here people actually do eat horsemeat there is the problem of the meaning of, *Ο άνθρωπος" which means "*a human being, human, a person..." in general.
It does not mean "the human" as in a specific person but as a general meaning which is why a is required and for that reason there is no "the" option.
- 716
I'm sorry, but what? I am a bit confused. Is άνθρωπος not a masculine noun? Because in masculine nouns O means 'the'. Or is there some reason why its an exception?
It's a bit like how the Wikipedia article on "lion" starts "The lion is a species ..." -- there, "the" does not refer to a particular lion, but to the idea of lions in general.
Similarly here, ο άνθρωπος could mean either "the human" (referring to a particular one) or to "humans; a (typical) human" in general.
- 716
Thanks, this clarifies it. Although considering that these sentences always lack the context of a larger text, you may want to consider getting rid of it.
Wouldn't the sentence 'The human does not eat horse meat' sound strange to you? Grammatically correct but weird? One would really have to come up with a contrived context to make sense of it, something like aliens trying to feed a captured human some horse meat. This is why the above Greek sentence is immediately understood to imply a general statment to a Greek speaker, even without any context.
Yes, "Ο" is the masculine article, however, the translation here does not call for an article which would indicate that a specific "human/person" eats horse meat" but it is the general expression of what occurs. Therefore, in English "a" is required or even plural. "Humans do not..."
Agreed. "human beings" would be okay as a translation, but "human being" is not okay, it must be "a human being"
- 1807
In listening I had a very hard time hearing the difference between άλογο and άλογα. Is the first one always wrong?
- 850
'άλογο' is the singular of horse, so it is not always wrong (if that is what you are asking)
- 1807
Yeah I was specifically asking if a real Greek-speaker would ever use the singular in this sentence.
Meaning, ''I don`t eat horse meat''?
- 186
Ο άνθρωπος δεν τρώει άλογα, why humans do not eat horses is considered wrong?
